Eric Klein, UConn's director of football strength and conditioning, entered the 18,000-square-foot weight room inside the Shenkman Training Center recently and made his way past the line of racks and machines.

So this is where the magic happens, someone said.

"I don't know about magic," Klein said. "This is where all the hard work and dedication is put in."

There's no secret formula for a Division I player to reach the peak of his performance potential. But there are advanced strategies, strict scheduling, specialized dieting, cooperation between departments and adherence to certain lifestyles and philosophies.

The mindset for players in training? It's OK for that to be magical or mythical.

"Everybody needs to have a Superman moment," Klein said. "Clark Kent was Superman, but to become Superman he went into the phone booth and changed his clothes. Well, when you come into this facility, you have to have that Superman moment. When you put on that workout gear, you're no longer Clark Kent. You have to take on that Superman approach and forget all else that is going on."

Coach Randy Edsall, hired in late December, has repeated one assessment over the past few months as much as any: We've got to be stronger. That's where Klein, hired in January, and Nancy Rodriguez, UConn's longtime director of sports nutrition, come in.

Like anything else in college athletics 2017, Klein's job is specialized. His job isn't to put a bunch of weight on a bar and get in the face of players until they lift it. He is about functional strength more so than impressive numbers. If a player can't do basic body weight exercises — push-ups or pull-ups, for example — it isn't yet time to talk about increasing bench press.

"I pride myself on player development, being able to take that kid out of high school, 17 or 18, and for lack of a better term, slow-cooking him and getting him better every year, so when he does achieve his junior/senior status we are reaching his true athletic potential and burgeoning his career to where they've got a chance at the NFL, or they're going to live a lifetime of healthy living," said Klein, who spent the past six years in the same position at Minnesota, where he worked with UConn athletic director David Benedict and Beth Goetz, the Huskies' chief operating officer. "[A typical approach is] we're going to lift like power lifters, sprint like sprinters and have the conditioning of a cross country team. That's kind of what everybody wants, but how do you get everything to mesh together that way? It's a little different in football. You can do X in the weight room and a guy can get stronger, but it doesn't necessarily make him a better football player."

Every returning player is in the midst of offseason workout programs designed by Klein, and soon the arriving freshmen will be indoctrinated with basic techniques. The process is not a sprint. There is, though, an immediate across-the-board goal.

"As I evaluated things when I came in and as we went through spring practice, I saw some things I knew we'd have to get a lot better at and one of those areas was strength and conditioning," Edsall said. "And then when we tested guys at the end of spring ball [in various lifts and workouts], what I thought I ended up getting in the results. I found out we've got a lot of work to do to get to the levels we need to be at from a strength standpoint, speed standpoint and explosion standpoint."

Learning In Storrs

UConn players are learning a lot these days — new coaches, new playbook, new schedules. There is a lot to accomplish, mentally and physically, in advance of the season opener Aug. 31 against Holy Cross, and playing catch-up relies on strong minds and bodies.

"These young men should understand how important the way they eat is to their physical and mental performance, as well as to their longevity in the sport," said Rodriguez, who has numerous roles at UConn and worked closely with the football program during Edsall's first stint, as well as under Bob Diaco (but not Paul Pasqualoni). "Talent will carry these kids a long way in college, no question. But for longevity in the sport, and to remain strong, remain fit, and be able to sustain what they have to sustain into a professional career requires they know how to eat well and take care of themselves."

Rodriguez and her staff design UConn's meal plans and meet with players to set goals (usually weight gain, weight loss or weight maintenance). Her lessons run from basic (eat breakfast, drink water) to nuanced (setting meal and snack times for players whose specially designed diets range from 3,000 to 6,500 calories a day).

Klein and his staff spent spring practice watching position coaches and taking notes. The offensive linemen need to operate from a lower position. Wide receivers have been coached to get their hips lower when making cuts. Most of what Klein teaches is built around a football goal.

Klein: Strong Background

Klein, married with two daughters, grew up in Kansas City, Mo., and moved to the Minneapolis area midway through high school. He was a defensive lineman and track athlete (shot put, hammer) at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., (Class of 1993). At the suggestion by Gerald Young, then the defensive line coach and now the athletic director at Carleton, Klein went into coaching. Young and Jerry Kill, best known for his time as coach at Minnesota, had been college roommates. In 1994, Kill gave Klein a job as an assistant football coach at Saginaw Valley State, where Klein also worked with the track and field team.

Klein quickly learned his professional love was in the weight room and with student-athlete interaction, not on the road recruiting or in the dark of film breakdown meetings. He went on to work at Emporia State in Kansas in 1999-2000 (where he earned a master's degree and met wife Allison) as a strength coach, then Southern Illinois (2001-07). Along the way, he also visited Nebraska several times and tried to model parts of his teaching to the philosophies of the strength coaches under Tom Osborne and the powerhouse Cornhuskers of the mid-to-late 1990s.

At Minnesota, Klein reunited with Kill. Edsall knows Kill and spoke to him about Klein, who was out of a job with the rest of the Minnesota staff after last season. Klein, who replaces Matt Balis (now at Notre Dame), also had the recommendation of Benedict and Goetz.

"I'm not a yeller," Klein said. "If that's what somebody wants, I'm not the guy for you. I'm a firm believer that we're going to invest in the work we do, and if you invest hard you are not going to want to quit when the going gets tough. I'm a teacher first."

June and July are perhaps the most involved months for a football strength coach. For most of May, players have been their own motivators.

"As I tell the players, there are all kinds of measuring sticks and all kinds of ways to evaluate," Edsall said. "This is another evaluation tool to see just how much guys got better since spring ball. Some, their bodies will look a little different. They'll come back stronger. You'll find out about the level of commitment they had when they were away."